In the last year God has transformed so much in my life and taught me so much. Two of the biggest things from this year is learning that my identity is in Christ and that it's all about LOVE. This is one of the hardest blogs for me to write but also one of the most honest. I pray that it encourages people and I know God will use it in mighty ways.
I apologize to anyone I have ever told that I am not gay. While in part that is true I leave out a significant part of my past in that statement. I have dealt with homosexuality for all of college and that is still something I deal with as God heals me from my past. Like most everyone I have heard over and over from the church that homosexuality is an abomination and so on and so forth. I have always thought that either you are a Christian following God, which includes not being gay or dealing with it, or if you do deal with that then you are not a Christian. God has been teaching me that it isn’t so cut and dry, not for everyone. In the past when I would feel God drawing me to him I knew that the life I was living wasn’t right and so I would cut ties with it the best I could. I would focus on God and I would try to change. Thing is I did this all on my own and eventually those feelings would break through whatever barrier I had built. At first it was little by little and sometimes I would patch the hole that had been made. This fix still only lasted a little while and I would encounter a feeling I just couldn’t shake, be that meeting someone and developing feelings for them or something else to tell me that I was gay. So I would go back to the life style that I had been so adamant that I wasn’t a part of. Every time I had those feelings come back to the point I couldn’t really avoid them anymore I thought either this is how God made me and if He made me this way then it must be ok, or I must not be a good enough Christian, have a strong enough faith, or there is something else that keeps pulling me away from God like this.
It has been almost two years now that God showed me he has so much more for me. He showed me that he had created me for so much more than the life I was living. He showed me a passage I had never really read much before and it showed me something totally new.
1 Thessalonians 4:3-7(NIV) “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality, that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.”
It was that last sentence that really spoke to me, “For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.” With God telling me that he didn’t create me for the life I was living this verse really pushed me to want to change. I knew that for this time to be different than the 154 times before I had to do something different. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.” I knew that every time I had tried to do it on my own I had failed and fallen right back in to my old ways. I told God, “I can’t do this on my own; I need you to change me. I need you to change my heart, change my desires, and change everything about me. You are the only one that can do this.” He did just that. Since that day in October of 2011 I have not been the same. Yes there have been times that something has popped up. These temptations, or whatever you want to call them, are usually from my past and past relationships that I have had to process and work through. I have learned over this past year that it is ok to be gay when you give that to God. He has healed so many things from my past this year, that being one of them. I have carried around so much shame and to some extent guilt for the sins in my past. This year is the first time that I have told people that part of my life, but even still I told it in a way where it wasn’t who I was just something I did. I believed that during college I had just been in a season of confusion and been influenced by my friends and people around me. Again like I had mentioned before if I was a Christian then I had to believe that homosexuality wasn’t something that I should deal with. It’s a choice right? It’s something that you can just choose not to be if you aren’t living in sin. Or at least that’s what I had always heard.
It’s amazing the schemes that Satan will use to get people trapped in sin, in hatred, in division, or whatever else can hurt the ministry of the church. As the church our one ministry is reconciliation and how can we reconcile people to God when we tell them that he hates them. Who wants a relationship with someone that hates them because of something they didn’t choose? It’s amazing what happens when you get yourself away from distractions, away from people who are all trying to sell their idea of what God is saying and who they think God is, and instead get alone just you and God. In those moments He teaches you so much about Himself and even who you are. This year the main lesson God has taught me is how to love. First he had to teach me how to love myself. Then he taught me how to love the people around me. That includes the people I have met around the world as well as my teammates, the people I lived with day in and day out. He also taught me how to see them the way He sees them, and not through my judgmental eyes, which He is still working on. He has also taught me how to love people who are hard to love, the ones who have different opinions of who God is or just don’t know God at all. This last month He has been teaching me in more depth how to love the ones who don’t know him. At the beginning of the month He told me to “Love them how I have loved you.” When I was in the depth of my sin and didn’t see how I could have a life with God anymore, He reached down slapped me in the back of the head, lovingly, and told me that He loved me and had created me for more than the way I was living. He didn’t tell me that I was an abomination, He didn’t tell me that I was going to hell if I didn’t change, or any of the other things many “christians” tell people who are not living the way they believe they should. Instead He told me he loved me and wanted more for my life and rekindled the relationship that had started 13 years before. He wants more for our lives but it is our choice to accept the life He is offering, and if we don’t guess what? He loves us anyway. That is what he meant when he told me to love them like He had loved me. When they aren’t living the life that God has for them love them anyway. When they reject what you have to tell them love them anyway. Even if they never accept Jesus as Lord of their life, LOVE THEM ANYWAY. It is love that we should use in the ministry of reconciliation, not hate. Probably the greatest lesson I will ever learn because it will continue throughout my entire life. You can’t know God if you don’t know love, especially since GOD IS LOVE.
